The present invention relates to an apparatus for cleaning molds, also referred to herein as tool sets, during the manufacture of shells or core packets that are ready for casting, by means of core shooters or shooting stations that are preferably in a linear arrangement, the core shooter in each instance incorporating tool sets consisting of a tool upper section, an ejector plate of the tool upper section and a tool lower section, it being possible to uncouple the tool sets from the core shooters and, preferably, eject them into a tool store.
In principle, the present invention relates to the field of casting technology. In order to cast shaped pieces, casting cores or casting molds are in most instances manufactured in separate parts, combined, and then joined together to form a casting mold or a core packet. Then, in order to produce, for example, metal work pieces, these core packets are filled with molten metal, whereafter, in series production, the core packets that are to be filled with molten metal pass through the production line lined up one behind the other.
Apparatuses to manufacture core packets of the type under discussion herein are already known from numerous publications. Solely as an example, reference is made herein to DE-OS 23 04 564. Also known from practice is the fact that the cores that are to be joined together to form a core packet are produced in a production line with a series of core shooters or shooting stations that incorporate a plurality of shot hoods, when the core packet has an additional core added to it at each shooting station that incorporates a shot hood. To this end, the cores are laid on a transit element that passes through the individual shooting stations when, in most instances, this transit element simultaneously serves as the tool lower section of the first shooting station.
The sand that is used to produce the core packets is always mixed with binding agent and this causes considerable soiling of the tools--the upper tool section with the ejector plate and the tool lower section. Accordingly, the tools have to be cleaned after a specific number of cycles and also be replaced in the shooting stations. It is preferred that the tools that have been replaced--either before or after the actual cleaning process--are brought into a tool store. Practice has shown that such a tool change is problematic if fully automatic manufacture and thus fully automatic tool cleaning is attempted. On the one hand, manipulation of the tool parts is a problem and on the other cleaning has to be carried out as rapidly as possible despite complicated handling procedures.
For this reason, it is the task of the present invention to describe an apparatus of the type referred to in the introduction hereto, and an appropriate procedure, by which rapid as well as fully automatic tool cleaning is made possible.